This is pretty much a full comprehensive review of all the gpu's I could think one would upgrade to, and I hope it helps in answering a lot of questions.

Now, it's not going to be one of those lame-o stock reviews that still has you wondering about total possible performance. I will be overclocking the living piss out of these cards on the stock coolers in the most relative games I can think. I do want you to understand a couple of variables that one may encounter with my tests:

- Overclock ability from one card to the next is not identical so your frequencies will vary based on silicon quality, ambient temperatures, and cooling capacity. Again, my overclocks do not represent the maximum possible overclock for every card.

- For games that I will need to utilize fraps due to the lack of in-game benchmark the result with be slightly different. Keep in mind it's always useful to apply a certain margin of error. I usually leave around 2 percent or so before claiming any significance in power differences. Your will belief will vary from mine.

Now that we have that out of the way I'll let you get a little more intimate with the competition.

ATI

ASUS 5970



MSI 5870 Lightening



HIS 5850 Reference



MSI 5770 Hawks (Crossfire)




nVidia

ASUS GTX480



PNY GTX470



ASUS GTX465




As you can tell some of them are reference and some of them are not so also keep that in mind when overclocks are concerned. But enough about that and let me go into detail concerning the actual reason for this thread.

The test system will include:



Intel i7 980x (4.61GHz HT Off)
Corsair Dominator GTX2's
EVGA 4-Way Classified X58
Enermax EVO 1250W
Separated Win7 Installs to factor out driver conflicts
Samsung 2493HM - its a 1920x1200 Capable but will run tests at 1080p

Games/Benchmarks:

3DMark03
3DMark05
3DMark06
3DMark Vantage
Battlefield Bad Company 2 (fraps)
Metro 2033 (Maxed w/o Physx and fraps)
Street Fighter 4
Resident Evil 5 (Fixed Benchmark)
FarCry 2
Crysis (unmodded)
Dirt 2
Hawx (10.1 enabled)
Just Cause 2 - Desert Sunrise & Concrete Jungle
Left4Dead 2
Counter-Strike:Source
Stone Giant
Heaven 2.0 (Normal Tessellation Only)

Those will be the tests that I will be utilizing that I have at my disposal. Now this will be suicidal overclocks on the stock gpu and my only requirement to assure overclock stability is that I must complete each benchmark at the same overclock. Therefore, if a clock can run on one bench and not the other I have to run the benchmark that passes at a higher frequency lower. This is to ensure consistency in the tests.

Okay before I post my graphs I would like to touch base on the gpu clocks aspect of the benching. The reference 5850 I had did not touch the same clocks as the 5870 lightning therefore I decided to experiment a little. I took a 5850 bios and flashed it to my 5870 lightning and everything worked to plan. I got the same clocks as the 5870 but with the 5850 shader count. All of these were done on stock air.

5770CF - 1055/1350
5850 - 1115/1200
5870 - 1115/1200
5970 - 1000/1200
465 - 900/2100
470 - 875/2100
480 - 900/2300

Also, on the Stone Giant benchmark I was unable to complete results with crossfire. Those results for the 5970 and 5770's were noted with 0's. The multi-gpu aspect of that particular benchmark is too bugged to consider crossfire/sli results accurate.

is "the living piss" a physical part  of the GPU? can i overclock this in MSI afterburner?    jk
 
sweet, excellent job!

I don't see this as fair when you're using a dual GPU against single GPUs
Either add SLI/Crossfire to those other cards or remove the 5970

kscott190

I don't see this as fair when you're using a dual GPU against single GPUs
Either add SLI/Crossfire to those other cards or remove the 5970

It's for comparison sake you can tell that SLI GTX480s would beat a 5970, but it would be nice to see it on the graphs.

Phero

kscott190

I don't see this as fair when you're using a dual GPU against single GPUs
Either add SLI/Crossfire to those other cards or remove the 5970

It's for comparison sake you can tell that SLI GTX480s would beat a 5970, but it would be nice to see it on the graphs.

Stone Giant

 
Yeah, SLi GTX 480s would beat the 5970, but then Cross-fire 5970 would eat the 400s up and release them in a manner no human would want to see.
 
Also, I love the design of those MSi cards, simple and effective!

chrisdglong

Nice review. Looks like the 480 is increasing its lead on the 5870. Really, this is no surprise to me. Yeah, SLI and Crossfire comparisons would be nice. Anyone else want to add those to this thread?

I already done sli/crossfire comparisons between the 480 and 5870 with both 2 and 3 gpu's. Its in a different thread. I'm not sure if I posted it here or not though.

Nice review other then the pathetic normal (default) settings in Heaven. Kick it up in that benchmark (it's not a game) and show which card really has the DX11 and Tessellation muscle.

danno428cj

jeffreylellis

Phero

kscott190

I don't see this as fair when you're using a dual GPU against single GPUs
Either add SLI/Crossfire to those other cards or remove the 5970

It's for comparison sake you can tell that SLI GTX480s would beat a 5970, but it would be nice to see it on the graphs.

Stone Giant

 
Yeah, SLi GTX 480s would beat the 5970, but then Cross-fire 5970 would eat the 400s up and release them in a manner no human would want to see.
 
Also, I love the design of those MSi cards, simple and effective!

I doubt SLI 5970's would do anything, but Crossfired 5970's would

Use your brain
No one said anything abut SLI 5970

kscott190

danno428cj

jeffreylellis

Phero

kscott190

I don't see this as fair when you're using a dual GPU against single GPUs
Either add SLI/Crossfire to those other cards or remove the 5970

It's for comparison sake you can tell that SLI GTX480s would beat a 5970, but it would be nice to see it on the graphs.

Stone Giant

Yeah, SLi GTX 480s would beat the 5970, but then Cross-fire 5970 would eat the 400s up and release them in a manner no human would want to see.

Also, I love the design of those MSi cards, simple and effective!

I doubt SLI 5970's would do anything, but Crossfired 5970's would

Use your brain
No one said anything abut SLI 5970

yes they did but they edited it out.  have a nice day

I thought you can only run a max of 4 GPU chips? (thus 2 5970's) am i wrong?

Nice sent of benches dude. It is always nice to have more charts and graphs to look at when thinking about upgrading. Definitely BR worthy.

whats interesting is the benches on the tessellation, very cool

jeffreylellis 

 
Yeah, SLi GTX 480s would beat the 5970, but then Cross-fire 5970 would eat the 400s up and release them in a manner no human would want to see.
 
Also, I love the design of those MSi cards, simple and effective!

Well if you want to go cross fire 5970's you can go tri sli 1500 for Tri sli with 480's, 5970's in CFX your looking to spend about 1400-1700 you could go 4 gpus vs 4 gpus but we will keep this at a price standpoint scaling on 2x 5970's is horrid so taking the same price. 3 gpus will out perform 4x gpus when it comes to tri sli vs cfx. Here is a graph of all the configurations put down, I read the review for it but sadly for some reason thier 480 results are very different than my 480 results just like on guru3d.com its review its test system was almost identical to mine but I raped them on fps in games as well as thier vantage score... But here is a composed list of all the new games showing scaling/performance. going 2x 5970's is not very wise when youc an go 3x 480's This is just a graph of compairson in the actual review 2 480's put a hurting on a single 5970 but I do have to agree it cost 200-300 dollars more at that point but if you want eye infinity you already have to spend an extra 100-200 dollars on the adapter thus closing the gap even more vs 2 cards vs the single 2 gpu card.
 
Now if i didnt use cuda/physx and real time gpu rendering and gpu in rendering and was on a budget of 700-800 dollars and was purly a gamer and didnt care about tessalation and the features nvidia gives like 3d vision or 3d vision surround yeah go with a single 5970 now if I was a gamer and wanted the extra tessalation with plans of 3d vision or 3d vision down the road it would be the 480 route down the road when I want full performance for my money with multiple gpus.
   
 

Phero

jeffreylellis
Face it NVIDIA is second rate when it comes over-all performance and ATi/AMD have way more potential.

Also, I owned the 2x470 and 2x480, so go fish.

Why do you use NVIDIA cards then?

Beuase they make good (Double as) work-station cards. But, if I was in it for the gaming experience, then I would go ATi...